Slobbovia

This article is about the postal game. For the fictional country, see Lower Slobbovia.

Slobbovia was a postal Diplomacy variant played among science fiction and gaming fans in North America and Europe from 1972 to 1986. The game was published in Slobinpolit Zhurnal (Слобинполит Журнал).

Slobbovia
Map of Slobbovia from issue #69 with "proper" S-N orientation.

It was unique among postal games in that, through extension of the convention of "press" (referred to in the game as "strakh") prevalent in postal Diplomacy, characterization, plot development and good writing became as important as the actual gameplay itself, and actually influenced the latter.

The resulting "shared world", created through collaboration, cooperation and conflict, had a substantial, well-fleshed out infrastructure that developed its own rich set of traditions.

History

The game first started in Killarney, Manitoba, in 1969, among Venturer Scouts as a live action role-playing game. May 24, 2009, marked the 40th anniversary since the game started at a Scout Camp. The game mythos was set in a mythical land named Slobbovia, after the perpetually frozen country that occasionally appeared in Al Capp's daily comic strip Li'l Abner.

The various regions of Slobbovia that appeared on the map were originally named after features around a local Killarney Lake: Cabinia was named after a cabin, Rabbitania after a bush where rabbits frolicked. In 1972, the game was adapted as a variant to the boardgame Diplomacy, which had reached its peak of popularity and had a convention known as "press" (press releases from the countries in play for propaganda purposes, or just plain fun) that fit in perfectly with Slobbovia. The game was chronicled in Слобинполит Журнал (transliterated from Cyrillic as Slobinpolit Zhurnal, meaning "Slobbovian political journal"). The stories were collected and printed, along with the adjudications for the game and mailed to the participants by a central gamemaster.

The game itself was simply a framework to write stories about the characters, institutions, and countries of Slobbovia. Contrasting starkly with Diplomacy, there was no way to "win" Slobbovia, and indeed, over-reliance on force ("Strumph") was looked down upon by the players. Players were free to name the countries they ruled, but more importantly played as a specific character, and not the country. This character was usually (but not always) the focus of that player's "press" (stories). Many players also developed stables of auxiliary characters about which they wrote, and sometimes the "strakh" written about these characters was more involved and entertaining than that for a player's primary character.

An important early expansion of the postal game beyond the original Canadian players and a handful of Americans was through the efforts of Charles C. Sharp, who operated for a substantial period as the sole gamemaster and publisher. When Sharp could no longer continue in those duties, the game went into hiatus for a short while before being revived as an amateur press association, APA-Slobbovia. Organized by Robert Bryan Lipton, an initial group of six fans took on rotating publishing/gamemastering duties until the game's ultimate demise. Publication under the APA was usually but not exclusively via use of mimeograph or spirit duplicator machines - it is an irony the game collapsed at the dawn of personal computers and the internet, which would have greatly eased publication burdens.

One hundred and nine issues of the Slobinpolit Zhurnal were published, with a frequency that varied over the lifetime of the game. At the beginning of Charlie Sharp's stewardship, the deadlines were three weeks apart. The increasing volume of players' "strakh" or press, with the burden this placed on the publisher(s), caused this to go to a monthly, then eventually a bimonthly, schedule. The last few issues came out at irregular intervals.

Issues 1 through 26 were (presumably) put out by various of the original Canadian players, primarily James Ritchie and Roger Nelson with help from other classmates, and produced on the school's mimeograph. After this high school cadre went on to university, they met future players from Canada and the US through science fiction conventions. John Carroll, a student at Penn State College in the US introduced the game to their university bookstore manager Charles Sharp. It was Sharp who brought considerable development to the game, as an editor, writer and with his access to publishing equipment. Issues 27 through 41 were published by Sharp. In #41 it was announced that a triumvirate of John Carroll, Fred Ramsey and Bill Spangler was taking over publication responsibilities, but they then handed it over to the APA organized by Bob Lipton, which published the balance of the Zhurnal's long run. The last issue came out in 1984/1985.

In print

The Zhurnal and strakh

The Slobinpolit Zhurnal consisted of two parts: the strakh (stories) and the strumph (military and political moves that followed the rules of the game). A player who was from a weaker power, but who was consistently funny or a good storyteller, gained "strakh" (a combination of chutzpah, moxie, "face" and style, the name of which was taken from a Jack Vance short story "The Moon Moth"), which was intangible but often led to tangible gains on the board (by being granted commands of fleets, armies, or provinces that could then rebel). Besides press releases, there were poems, songs, illustrations (including complete comic books), and even "advertisements" (e.g. "I would never kick my peasant without my Furfenhager boots"). Slobbovia lasted for many years as new players would cycle in to replace those that had fallen away. Eventually the core players finally gave out and collapsed under the sheer weight and complexity of the game and storylines as they moved further away from their college days.

"Strumph" is another term that works on several levels simultaneously. On the surface, it is simply a reference to the military and political moves that constitute the underlying game. But within the stories, strumph was a viewed as overweening crassness and boorishness. A player might be able to militarily defeat another, but to do it with a lack of style would be "strumphish". Use of bureaucracy for the simple purpose of bludgeoning someone with power would be sure to give the offending player the undesirable label of "strumph-mad".

Other publications

Besides the Zhurnal, there were several other publications pertaining to Slobbovia and its milieu.

Some were of a theoretically periodic nature. Neurse Schivosk was a forum for communication between the publishers who took turns adjudicating the game and putting out the Zhurnal, published by one of their number selected as the "Arkhivist." The Arkhivist was also responsible for maintaining the accounts (game fees and postage) of the non-publisher players of the game. Budos Paraszt was its short-lived replacement toward the end of the Zhurnal's run, as the players sought a way to keep the game going.

There were also several unique stand-alone publications supplementing the regularly published Zhurnal. Boleski's Unkonkize Hiztory of Slobbovia was a history of Slobbovia written by James Ritchie, as his then-character of Cardinal Justinian Urbanus Boleski. It was deliberately written from Cardinal Boleski's point of view, reflecting what was established as his approach to the writing of history. Many players experimented with comic book format, comic and mural artist Curt Shoultz led the collaboration on a series called "Unlikely Tales".

Also, more than one instance of a Novice Packet for new players was published: reference is made to the existence of a novice package in the pages of the Sharp Zhurnals, while several of the APA's publishers and players put together such a packet in the latter days of the game.

As a role-playing game and as a shared world

As a complex and involved take on the concept of "King of the Hill," the original Venturer Scout version of Slobbovia anticipated by a fair number of years many live action role-playing games. After adaptation to the Diplomacy framework, but with the continued emphasis on the players' characters as opposed to the countries they represented, Slobbovia can easily be viewed as a role-playing game, and as such preceded Dungeons & Dragons by several years, though it had little impact in the general gaming world by comparison to D&D.

It also was an example of the "shared world" format before it became popular amongst writers in science fiction and fantasy. The unwritten but usually respected rule was that a player could borrow other players' characters, but never kill them. Previously published stories were to be accepted as "fact," although reinterpretation of events was allowed. (e.g. When one player "sank" another's capitol beneath the sea, the owning player wrote a story about a mass-hallucination.) Putting another player's character in a situation that was inconsistent with the nature of that character was considered suspect, but the clever writer would not only go with the flow, but turn it to his advantage. This was at the very core of being "strakhful", and always earned the player great respect if he could pull it off.

Legacy

The cultural impact of the game of Slobbovia was the development of several science fiction/fantasy writers and game designers, including Greg Costikyan and Bruce Schlickbernd. Edgar Award-winning author Sharyn McCrumb was also a player. James Ritchie, the first archivist, eventually became a real archivist and historical researcher.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• The World of Slobbovia
• Community Writing From Slobbovia to Thieves’ World
• A Fond Review of An Old Classic - Swords & Sorcery - BoardGameGeek A review of an SPI fantasy board game which used memes and material from Slobbovia